Presenting the most up-to-date coverage on our knowledge of this society, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures is the first comprehensive and comparative reference source to chronicle Pre-Hispanic, Colonial, and modern Mesoamerica. Written for a wide audience, it is an invaluable reference for interested lay persons, students, teachers, and scholars in such fields as art, archaeology, religious studies, anthropology, Latin American culture, and the history of the region. Organized alphabetically, the articles range from 500-word biographies to 7,000-word entries on geography (...) and history to the legacy of the arts, writings, architecture, and religious rituals. An extensive network of cross-references, blind entries, and annotated bibliographies guide the reader to related entries within the Encyclopedia and provide the groundwork for further research. (shrink)

El objetivo de este libro es ofrecer una introducción al pensamiento del historiador y teórico de la historia Reinhart Koselleck. Para ello, reconstruye, sistematiza e interpreta sus tesis nucleares sobre la historia de los conceptos políticos. Ésta es puesta en valor por el autor como más que una mera metodología historiográfica; en concreto, como una de las mejores maneras de desarrollar una teoría crítica del presente y una acción política.

Se analiza desde un punto de vista filosófico-político y pragmático-discursivo las características ideológicas del discurso de Rafael Correa durante las elecciones presidenciales de 2006. Correa acometió una interpretación laclausiana del tiempo histórico, traduciendo que la crisis de representación del país podía originar un estallido o momento populista. En base a ello, el discurso populista que llevó a Correa al poder en 2007, se construyó sobre el uso de dos marcos argumentativos básicos: 1) ubicar a los partidos políticos tradicionales (“la partidocracia”) (...) como antagónicos a la patria y 2) proponer una reforma constitucional mediante una Asamblea Constituyente. Se concluye con una valoración crítica sobre los límites entre movilización popular y su institucionalismo. (shrink)

Despite the countless similarities between David Hume’s and Adam Smith’s moral theories, many people have lately argued that the Theory of Moral Sentiments can be read as a critical response to Hume’s ethics. In this paper I contend that the most important difference between these sentimentalist philosophers has to do with the source and nature of morality’s normative authority, which in turn determines what is a legitimate moral reason or what is morality properly speaking.

Este estudio buscó describir e interpretar las teorías subjetivas sobre la identidad profesional docente que se construyen y difunden noticiosamente durante la educación de emergencia por la pandemia de COVID 19. Se utilizó un estudio de análisis documental, metodología cualitativa y un diseño de estudio de casos. El muestreo intencionado y por conveniencia corresponde a 40 noticias de prensa escrita en español, sobre el profesor(a) en pandemia y publicadas en diferentes medios que fueron recolectadas a través de Google Noticias desde (...) el 11 de marzo de 2020 y hasta el 01 de noviembre de 2020. A partir de una codificación temática, los resultados evidenciaron teorías subjetivas asociadas a las exigentes características, roles, funciones y valores con los que se identifica al profesorado durante la pandemia. El análisis mostró los distintos sentidos del ejercicio profesional y las competencias asociadas a su desempeño en la prensa. En la discusión, se utilizaron estudios relativos a la práctica docente para interpretar estos resultados. (shrink)

We read Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments as a critical response to David Hume's moral theory. While both share a commitment to moral sentimentalism, they propose different ways of meeting its main challenge, that is, explaining how judgments informed by (partial) sentiments can nevertheless have a justified claim to general authority. This difference is particularly manifest in their respective accounts of ‘moral optics’, or the way they rely on the analogy between perceptual and moral judgments. According to Hume, (...) making perceptual and moral judgments requires focusing on frequently co-occurring impressions (perceptions of objects or reactive sentiments) for tracking an existing object with its perceptual properties or an agent's character traits. Smith uses visual perception for the purpose of illustrating one source of the partiality of the sentiments people feel in response to actions. Before making a moral judgment, people have to disregard this partiality and accept that they are all equally important. Smith and Hume's different ways of relying on the same analogy reveals the still-overlooked and yet profound differences between their moral theories. (shrink)

This paper aims to determine whether it is necessary to propose the extreme of putrefaction as the only unmistakable sign in diagnosing the death of the human organism, as David Oderberg does in a recent paper. To that end, we compare Oderberg’s claims to those of other authors who align with him in espousing the so-called theory of hylomorphism but who defend either a neurological or a circulatory-respiratory criterion for death. We then establish which interpretation of biological phenomena is (...) the most reasonable within the metaphysical framework of hylomorphism. In this regard, we hold that technology does not obscure the difference between life and death or confect metaphysically anomalous beings, such as living human bodies who are not organisms or animals of the human species who are informed by a vegetative soul, but instead demands a closer and more careful look at the “fuzzy area” between a healthy organism and a decaying corpse. In the light of hylomorphism, we conclude that neurological and circulatory-respiratory criteria are not good instruments for diagnosing death, since they can offer only probabilistic prognoses of death. Of the two, brain death is further away from the moment of death as it merely predicts cardiac arrest that will likely result in death. Putrefaction, the criterion that Oderberg proposes, is at the opposite end of the fuzzy area. This is undoubtedly a true diagnosis of death, but it is not necessary to wait for putrefaction proper—a relatively late stage of decomposition—to be sure that death has already occurred. Rather, early cadaveric phenomena demonstrate that the matter composing a body is subject to the basic forces governing all matter in its environment and has thus succumbed to the universal current of entropy, meaning that the entropy-resisting activity has ceased to constitute an organismal unity. When this unity is lost, there is no possibility of return. (shrink)

The analysis of the irregular moral sentiments that Smith describes in TMS II.iii evidences the enormous influence of David Hume’s theory of passions in the moral theory of his successor, as well as the critical differences between these Scottish philosophers’ moral proposals. Moreover, these atypical situations also allow us to grasp the different parts of Smithian moral judgment, and to exclude – despite Smith’s assertion – the influence of moral luck on these judgments.Keywords: Adam Smith, David Hume, moral (...) judgment, passions, moral luck. (shrink)

IN THE LAST PART of the Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith puts his theory in a class with those of his contemporaries Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, namely, the systems that make sentiments the principle of approbation. Despite recognizing important differences with both of them, he thinks that since he has placed the origin of moral sentiments in sympathy, and in particular the fact that we are able to enter into the motives of the agent and get pleasure (...) from finding them appropriate to their cause, sentiments are the foundation of his theory of morals. Many of Smith’s commentators, in fact almost all of the most important studies over the last few years, reaffirm the author’s self-description. However, my aim in this paper is to challenge this view by showing that Smith’s system can also be plausibly seen as a theory of practical reasoning, and in some important aspects very similar to Aristotelian ethics. Surprisingly few scholars have seen this parallel. Laurence Berns, Samuel Fleischacker, Charles Griswold, and Gloria Vivenza are the latest exceptions, identifying several points of coincidence between Adam Smith and Aristotle’s ethics. None of them, however, has tied all these similarities under a unified interpretation, such as the one I propose here: The basic analogy between these theories, and the source of those particular coincidences, is the operation of practical reason. Moreover, and besides the common elements with Aristotle’s ethics, Smith’s reconstruction of practical reason simultaneously announces some of the main features of modern accounts of ethics, such as impartiality and universality as preconditions of moral judgment. The integration of these ancient and modern elements in a single coherent theory allows Smith’s TMS to overcome the insufficiencies and paradoxes of both these traditions, and it constitutes one of the most interesting and challenging proposals of modern ethics. (shrink)

Resumen Los filósofos sentimentalistas escoceses David Hume y Adam Smith proponen dos estrategias distintas para restringir las tendencias egoístas de la naturaleza humana. A pesar de las evidentes similitudes de sus propuestas morales, Smith encuentra dentro del ser humano la capacidad para transformar sus pasiones parciales y aspirar hacia ideales de perfección. El sentimentalismo de Hume, en cambio, no permite la autotransformación de la persona, y debe apoyarse en convenciones sociales para manipular y redirigir los impulsos egoístas desde fuera. (...) Ambos logran su objetivo. Pero mientras Hume se conforma con una moral funcional para la vida social, Smith abre una nueva dimensión de desarrollo para el ser humano.The Scottish sentimentalist philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith suggest different strategies for restricting and accommodating human selfish tendencies. In spite of the obvious similarities of their moral proposals, Smith finds within the human being the capacity to transform his partial passions and to aspire to ideals of perfection. In contrast, Hume's sentimentalism does not allow for self-transformation, and must rely on social conventions to manipulate and redirect selfish impulses from without. Both attempts achieve their goal. However, while for Hume peaceful social interaction seems to be the only aim of morality; for Smith morality also opens a new dimension of development for the human being. (shrink)

In this book Harris intends to construct an agent-centered conception of morality grounded on a naturalistic understanding of practical reason. In order to achieve this goal, he contrasts his Aristotelian revisionist perspective with the traditional and internalist Kantian proposals, focusing on two specific matters: the opposition between agent-centered and agent-neutral norms, and the newer and very interesting discussion of symmetrical versus asymmetrical regulative norms. The first topic will be especially relevant for the rejection of traditional Kantianism, while the second will (...) be the main argument against Kantian internalism. The author defends the thesis that some nouns have priority in some contexts and not in others against the context-insensibility of Kantian theories. In particular, giving a fair account of them and plenty of detailed argument to refute some of their aspects, he discusses Barbara Herman’s, Marcia Baron’s, Nancy Sherman’s, David Cummiskey’s, Christine Kosgaard’s, and John Rawls’s proposals. (shrink)

Reseña al más reciente libro de David Soto Carrasco "Filosofía política y ética. Claves conceptuales para comprender el presente" (2023). En su obra, el autor, desde la perspectiva de la historia conceptual, recorre algunos de los conceptos fundamentales de la política moderna. Asimismo, realiza un análisis ético-crítico de problemas que atañen directamente a nuestro actualidad. El libro en conjunto constituye una crítica ético-política para comprender nuestro presente.

Para Eugenio d’Ors, la vida humana no se define por su relación con la muerte, sino como principio creador de formas que se afirma a sí mismo. En cambio, la muerte sí se define como lo radicalmente opuesto a la vida, un principio de negación y destrucción, de fatalidad y resistencia. De este modo se establece entre ambos principios una relación dialéctica, una tensión de antagonistas que hace que la vida sea una permanente lucha contra la muerte. Por ello el (...) planteamiento de d’Ors acerca de la muerte adquiere un fuerte sentido ético y beligerante, afirmando la necesidad de vivir en actitud alerta y combativa. (shrink)

According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.

How should we account for the extraordinary regularity in the world? Humeans and Non-Humeans sharply disagree. According to Non-Humeans, the world behaves in an extraordinarily regular way because of certain necessary connections in nature. However, Humeans have thought that Non-Humean views are metaphysically objectionable. In particular, there are two general metaphysical principles that Humeans have found attractive that are incompatible with all existing versions of Non-Humeanism. My goal in this paper is to develop a novel version of Non-Humeanism that is (...) consistent with (and even entails) both of these general metaphysical principles. By endorsing such a view, one can have the explanatory benefits of Non-Humeanism while at the same time avoiding two of the major metaphysical objections towards Non-Humeanism. (shrink)

Inspired by Cantor's Theorem (CT), orthodoxy takes infinities to come in different sizes. The orthodox view has had enormous influence in mathematics, philosophy, and science. We will defend the contrary view---Countablism---according to which, necessarily, every infinite collection (set or plurality) is countable. We first argue that the potentialist or modal strategy for treating Russell's Paradox, first proposed by Parsons (2000) and developed by Linnebo (2010, 2013) and Linnebo and Shapiro (2019), should also be applied to CT, in a way that (...) vindicates Countabilism. Our discussion dovetails with recent independently developed treatments of CT in Meadows (2015), Pruss (2020), and Scambler (2021), aimed at establishing the mathematical viability, and therefore epistemic possibility, of Countabilism. Unlike these authors, our goal isn't to vindicate the mathematical underpinnings of Countabilism. Rather, we aim to argue that, given that Countabilism is mathematically viable, Countabilism should moreover be regarded as true. After clarifying the modal content of Countabilism, we canvas some of Countabilism's many positive implications, including that Countabilism provides the best account of the pervasive independence phenomena in set theory, and that Countabilism has the power to defuse several persistent puzzles and paradoxes found in physics and metaphysics. We conclude that in light of its theoretical and explanatory advantages, Countabilism is more likely true than not. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 143-165, June 2022.

Comment la notion aristotelicienne de puissance s'est-elle constituee? Comment Aristote peut-il designer du meme nom de dynamis a la fois le principe du changement et l'etre en puissance en tant qu'il est distingue de l'etre en acte? L'histoire de la dynamis correspond-elle a l'effacement d'un sens primitivement intensif, qui serait celui de la force, au profit du sens aristotelicien de potentialite? Plutot que d'aborder ces questions dans les limites d'une lecture interne du Livre Theta de la Metaphysique sur la puissance (...) et l'acte, ou meme du corpus aristotelicien, la presente recherche plonge d'abord la notion de puissance dans son histoire pre-aristotelicienne, philosophique et non-philosophique. Si les termes d'energeia et d'entelekheia, par lesquels Aristote designe ce qui est en acte, sont des neologismes qui possedent la precision du vocabulaire technique, le mot dynamis appartient au grec courant et comporte une polysemie qui complique la comprehension de son usage. Ce livre veut articuler les sens philosophiques de cette notion chez Aristote a partir de son histoire depuis Homere et Hesiode, a travers Democrite, Xenophon ou encore le corpus hippocratique. Mais l'etude des principaux textes (poetiques, politiques, medicaux, mathematiques, philosophiques) est conduite selon un fil conducteur precis, dicte par l'emploi dominant de ce terme dans la clause restrictive kata dynamin (autant que je le peux). Les significations et l'histoire de la dynamis sont reevaluees a partir de ce nouveau point de depart. L'heritage platonicien est aussi pris en compte pour degager finalement le sens de la critique aristotelicienne de la puissance, qui met en lumiere son indetermination axiologique et ontologique, sans renoncer aux sens de capacite et de force. Nous ne cherchons pas a proposer une etude lexicographique, mais a situer la pensee aristotelicienne de la puissance et de l'acte dans une histoire conceptuelle, en esperant qu'elle gagnera ainsi en coherence et en clarte. (shrink)

Psychological and philosophical studies have extended J. J. Gibson’s notion of affordances. Affordances are possibilities for bodily action presented to us by the objects of our perception. Recent work has argued that we should extend the actions afforded by perception to mental action. I argue that we can extend the notion of affordance itself. What I call ‘Introspective Affordances’ are possibilities for mental action presented to us by introspectively accessible states. While there are some prima facie worries concerning the non-perceptual (...) nature of introspection, I will argue that our internal mental lives share enough commonalities with experiences in our environment to warrant this extension. I will demonstrate the value of introspective affordances by showing how they allow us to explain an underexplored aspect of thought insertion. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary exploration discusses the intricate conceptual linkages among Buddhism’s Eighth State of Consciousness, Quantum Holography, and the Jungian Collective Unconscious. Central to this study is examining the Eighth Consciousness in Buddhist thought—a realm that transcends the conventional sensory and mental states to connect with a more universal and profound awareness. Drawing parallels, Quantum Holography posits that every part of the universe retains information about the whole, much like a hologram. This notion seemingly mirrors the Jungian concept of the Collective (...) Unconscious, which postulates a shared reservoir of memories and ideas across humanity. The paper contends that the intricate dance of photons, oscillating between particle and wave states, mediates perception through resonance and hints at a multi-layered consciousness stratum that mirrors the vast, enigmatic quantum reality expanse. The study illuminates the intersections and divergences among these frameworks through meticulous comparative analysis, positing that an integrative understanding of quantum theories and Buddhist wisdom can unravel the human psyche’s profound depths. By weaving Eastern philosophies with Western psychological and quantum theoretical tapestry, the discourse unveils a multifaceted consciousness comprehension, championing integrative approaches as invaluable tools for decoding the mind and universe's enigmatic interplay from a quantum viewpoint. (shrink)

This chapter describes three relatively specific forms such as destructive uploading, gradual uploading, and nondestructive uploading. Neuroscience is gradually discovering various neural correlates of consciousness, but this research program largely takes the existence of consciousness for granted. It presents an argument for the pessimistic view and an argument for the optimistic view, both of which run parallel to related arguments that can be given concerning teletransportation. Cryonic technology offers the possibility of preserving our brains in a low‐temperature state shortly after (...) death, until such time as the technology is available to reactivate the brain or perhaps to upload the information in it. Reconstructive uploading from brain scans is closely akin to ordinary (nongradual) uploading from brain scans, with the main difference being the time delay, and perhaps the continued existence in the meantime of the original person. (shrink)

The simulation hypothesis has recently excited renewed interest, especially in the physics and philosophy communities. However, the hypothesis specifically concerns {computers} that simulate physical universes, which means that to properly investigate it we need to couple computer science theory with physics. Here I do this by exploiting the physical Church-Turing thesis. This allows me to introduce a preliminary investigation of some of the computer science theoretic aspects of the simulation hypothesis. In particular, building on Kleene's second recursion theorem, I prove (...) that it is mathematically possible for us to be in a simulation that is being run on a computer \textit{by us}. In such a case, there would be two identical instances of us; the question of which of those is ``really us'' is meaningless. I also show how Rice's theorem provides some interesting impossibility results concerning simulation and self-simulation; briefly describe the philosophical implications of fully homomorphic encryption for (self-)simulation; briefly investigate the graphical structure of universes simulating universes simulating universes, among other issues. I end by describing some of the possible avenues for future research that this preliminary investigation reveals. (shrink)

Consider the following two (hypothetical) generic causal claims: “Living in a neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles” and “living in an affluent neighborhood with many families with children increases purchases of bicycles.” These claims not only differ in what they suggest about how bicycle ownership is distributed across different neighborhoods (i.e., “the data”), but also have the potential to communicate something about the speakers’ values: namely, the prominence they accord to affluence in representing and making decisions (...) about the social world. Here, we examine the relationship between the level of granularity with which a cause is described in a generic causal claim (e.g., neighborhood vs. affluent neighborhood) and the value of the information contained in the causal model that generates that claim. We argue that listeners who know any two of the following can make reliable inferences about the third: 1) the level of granularity at which a speaker makes a generic causal claim, 2) the speaker’s values, and 3) the data available to the speaker. We present results of four experiments (N=1,323) in the domain of social categories that provide evidence in keeping with these predictions. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore the role of two models of well-being in the prediction of psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic, namely PERMA and mature happiness. According to PERMA, well-being is mainly composed of five elements: positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning in life, and achievement. Instead, mature happiness is understood as a positive mental state characterized by inner harmony, calmness, acceptance, contentment, and satisfaction with life. Rooted in existential positive psychology, this harmony-based happiness represents the result of living in (...) balance between positive and negative aspects of one's life. We hypothesized that mature happiness would be a more prominent protective factor during the present pandemic than the PERMA composite. A total of 12,203 participants from 30 countries responded to an online survey including the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), the PERMA-Profiler, and the Mature Happiness Scale-Revised (MHS-R). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that PERMA and mature happiness were highly correlated, but nonetheless, they represented two separate factors. After controlling for demographic factors and country-level variables, both PERMA Well-being and MHS-R were negative predictors of psychological distress. Mature happiness was a better predictor of stress, anxiety, and general distress, while PERMA showed a higher prediction of depression. Mature happiness moderated the relation between the perceived noxious effects of the pandemic and all markers of distress (depression, anxiety, stress, and total DASS-21). Instead, PERMA acted as a moderator in the case of depression and stress. These findings indicate that inner harmony, according to the mature happiness theory, is an essential facet of well-being to be taken into consideration. The results of this study can also orient policies aimed to alleviate the negative effects of the pandemic on mental health through the promotion of well-being. (shrink)

"[This book is] focused on the place of character and virtue in professional practice. Professional practices usually have codes of conduct designed to ensure good conduct; but while such codes may be necessary and useful, they appear far from sufficient, since many recent public scandals in professional life seem to have been attributable to failures of personal moral character. This book argues that there is a pressing need to devote more attention in professional education to the cultivation or development of (...) such moral qualities as integrity, courage, self-control, service and selflessness... [This] volume looks beyond traditional professions to explore the ethical dimensions of a broad range of important professional practices. Inspired by a successful international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic, the book examines various ways of promoting moral character and virtue in professional life from the general ethical perspective of contemporary neo-Aristotelian virtue theory."--. (shrink)

Na poti do sem sem razmišljal, kako začeti to srečanje – in bolj sem razmišljal, bolj se mi je zdelo absurdno, da bi uvodoma predstavljal nekoga, ki ga vsi poznate. Pač pa lahko povem anekdoto, za katero mogoče ne veste vsi. V Društvu za antične in humanistične študije smo predlani prišli na idejo, da bi profesorja Gantarja predlagali za neko drugo nagrado, ki je imela med obrazci tudi obrazec za soglasje predlaganega. Naredil sem osnovnošolsko napako ter pisal profesorju, če ga (...) lahko izpolni in podpiše. On pa mi je odpisal, da je nagrad v življenju dobil preveč in da prosi, naj ga ne predlagamo. Eksplicitno izraženi zahtevi se je težko upreti. Smo pa v društvu tudi poznavalci Otona Župančiča, ki je, kot veste, napisal, da gre osel enkrat na led, »baš to je oslovstvo«, in da modrec ve, kako je »danes pal«, jutri bo pa plesal po njem. Ko smo tako profesorja predlagali naslednjič, tokrat za Prešernovo nagrado, ga nismo nič spraševali. Na tem mestu bi se zato rad zahvalil Miljani Cunta s Slovenske matice, ki je vse to koordinirala, in SAZU, ki je predlog takoj podprla; resnično sem vesel, da ob tej priložnosti lahko sediva tukaj. (shrink)

El presente artículo es un estudio sobre las diferenciaciones (aqsām) del amor, uno de los puntos más importantes del principal escrito que Ibn ʿArabī dedicó a la cuestión amorosa, el capítulo 178 de Las Iluminaciones de La Meca (al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya). A través de un juego de oscilación y equilibrio entre perspectivas ontológicas y epistemológicas aparentemente enfrentadas –incomparabilidad/similaridad, oculto/manifiesto, unidad/multiplicidad, espíritu/cuerpo– y un recurrente manejo del lenguaje de las alusiones (išāra), el maestro andalusí distingue entre amor divino (ilāhī), espiritual (rūḥānī), natural (...) (ṭabī‘ī) y elemental (ʿunṣurī). Se ofrece un análisis y comentario del texto akbarí que pretende aclarar la especificidad de cada una de estas nociones, así como su íntima relación con el discurso amoroso del autor. (shrink)